A blog about media and technology. Sorry, no cat GIFs.

Monthly Archives: February 2015

Who did an adequate job on social media this week? Millions of people. Who did badly? Fewer than that, but I’m going to call out some particularly bad misdeeds anyway.

1) Keith Olbermann: In case you haven’t heard, the ESPN anchor was booted for a week with his “pitiful” reaction to a Penn State tweet celebrating THON, the school’s annual fundraiser for pediatric cancer research.

Look, I’m no Penn State fan. I went to Pitt and besides, I found the whole Sandusky scandal and everyone (Joe Paterno included) absolutely revolting. We should never forget that an assistant football coach raped kids and was abetted by an administration determined to protect the team’s (and university’s) reputation. But one can still applaud the students behind THON, which raises millions of dollars for a good cause.

Besides, calling anyone “pitiful” is an ad hominem argument and invalid on its face. So right there, Keith Olbermann loses.

2) Lebaon’s government: The country’s top Sunni religious authority filed a complaint against a satirist who shared on Twitter a photo deemed insulting to Islam. Charbel Khalil posted a photo that, according to the Associated Press, shows a woman in a short dress under a black robe, sitting on a cover resembling the ISIS banner. Included with the photo were the words: “sexual jihad under the prophet’s umbrella?”
I don’t get it either, but the religious and civic leaders in Lebanon need to learn how to take a joke.

3) Arkansas lawmakers: Specifically, the 11 lawmakers who voted against a bill that would have prohibited cellphone use while driving. The bill was endorsed by the Arkansas State Police and the Arkansas Association of Chiefs of Police, but that wasn’t enough to sway people concerned about government overreach. One opponent, Rep. Jana Della Rosa, said: “I think the problem is there’s no good solution to it in general.” Yes, why should we expect lawmakers to try solving problems?

4) Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey’s president has an incredibly cool name. But he has an incredibly uncool government. Prosecutors in that country have been cracking down on social media posts and protests that criticize the government. The latest target is Merve Buyuksarac, a former Miss Turkey who posted a satirical poem on her Instagram account. She faces charges of insulting a public official. If convicted, Buyuksarac faces up to two years in prison.

Turkey’s shameful crackdown on freedom of expression continues.

5) Tennesee Rep. Sheila Butts: Butts is under fire from the Council on American-Islamic Relations for a Facebook post that said, “It is time for a Council on Christian Relations and an NAAWP in this Country.” CAIR considers the post racist. Given the apparent twist on “NAACP” in her post, it’s not hard to see why. Butts, for her part, has said her post was misunderstood and that the acronym stands for “National Association of Advancement of Western Peoples.”
Yeah, that doesn’t make it any better.

And this week’s winner: Oklahoma.

I will never forgive Oklahoma for its outright theft of my favorite NBA team, but I have to give its lawmakers props for doing what Arkansas couldn’t: pass a bill banning texting and driving. The state House overwhelmingly approved a bill that would make texting and driving a secondary offense – police would have to pull you over for another reason – which makes it an imperfect bill. But it’s better than nothing. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,328 people were killed in 2012 in distraction-related crashes.

As with everything in these troubling times, the issue is a partisan one: President Obama came out in favor of strong rules enforcing net neutrality. Therefore Republicans hate it. Ted Cruz called it “Obamacare for the Internet.” Ajit Pai, one of the two GOP commissioners on the FCC, warned that Internet taxes are coming. Sen. John Thun, R-South Dakota, vows to stop these “monopoly-era regulations.”

Of all the issues before us that are needlessly partisan, net neutrality has to be at the forefront. It doesn’t impose a tax on consumers; it doesn’t dictate content on the Internet. All it does is keep the Internet the same level playing field it has been since its inception.

The Associated Press has a great description of what net neutrality means for consumers:

Net neutrality is the idea that websites or videos load at about the same speed. That means you won’t be more inclined to watch a particular show on Amazon Prime instead of on Netflix because Amazon has struck a deal with your service provider to load its data faster.

The Internet has always been a first-come, first-served place when it comes to content. No one had to pay a premium to deliver their content to users ahead of someone else. It’s that kind of environment where startups can thrive (or fail) based on their merits, not because they have to pay a premium just to get in the game.

Furthermore, net neutrality supports the status quo. It’s ISP giants like Comcast and Verizon who want to change the rules, by charging content providers a premium for faster access to consumers. As for Sen. Thune’s crack about “monopoly-era regulations,” it’s worth noting that in many areas across the country, broadband providers are a monopoly. If you don’t want to pay the cable company’s prices for high-speed Internet, good luck finding an alternative that’s just as fast. The days of competitive ISPs went the way of dialup service.

There are those who fear “price controls,” but the FCC has said that rates for Internet access won’t be subject to preapproval. But customers will have an avenue for complaining about unfair costs.

Net neutrality should be a bipartisan issue. Liberals should like it because it preserves the free flow of information (OK, EVERYONE should like that), and conservatives should like it because it allows the free market to flourish online. Government shouldn’t be in the business of throttling the exchange of ideas, but neither should corporations.

As far as the voters are concerned, this is an issue with common ground. A University of Delaware poll in November — AFTER President Obama came out in favor of strong net neutrality rules — showed that 81 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans oppose Internet “fast lanes.”

Today’s ruling was an encouraging step in preserving an open Internet. But I have faith in our Congressional leaders, and possibly the courts, that they can undo all of this common ground that the voters have on net neutrality.

Beck argues that the show just wasn’t as discussion-worthy as it was last year. In 2014 we had Ellen DeGeneres taking selfies with celebrities, a mid-show pizza delivery and a blooper by John Travolta that almost instantly spawned a name generator.

This year, we had awkward jokes, terrible puns (even for me) and another blooper from John Travolta that was less funny than creepy.

Creepy, right? (AP Photo)

Two moments were worth talking about: First, Patricia Arquette’s acceptance speech in which she called for equal rights for women. Naturally, it was branded “political” (because equality somehow requires pro- and anti- sides). Second, Lady Gaga’s incredible medley of “The Sound of Music” songs to celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary. I imagine the Oscars lost half their audience by that point, though, since it didn’t appear until after 11 p.m. EST.

Neil Patrick Harris usually kills as an awards host, but this year he failed to engage the audience the way Ellen did a year ago.

The Oscars had some Important Moments on Sunday: Arquette was the first but not the last to make a statement in her speech. But they weren’t as fun.

This is not to say that the Oscars were a complete social-media dud: Beck reports that more people on Facebook talked about the Oscars this year than last year. So it could just be that people were more long-winded than the 140-character limit would allow.

Twitter usage has always paled compared to Facebook. If Beck’s story becomes part of a trend, the microblogging site could be in trouble. It’s a handy social conversation app — and one that I prefer to Facebook — but if fewer people flock to it, its relevance will disappear.

Next year, bring back Ellen. Maybe it will excite the Twitterverse again.

It’s been a tough week on social media for four people and a TV station. Sen. Rand Paul and three criminals all had a bad week, but the state of Hawaii had a good one. Take a look:

First the five social media fails:

Sen. Rand Paul: The Kentucky Senator and 2016 presidential hopeful made a Pinterest page for his presumed White House rival, Hillary Clinton. The page, before it was deleted, included boards labeled “Inspirational Quotes”, “Power Couple” and “White House Remodel.” Because, you know, girls like to redecorate. Pinterest took the account down, because impersonations violate the social network’s terms of service. You’d think Paul would have less sexist ways of criticizing Clinton. It’s worth noting he didn’t create a fake Pinterest page for Ted Cruz.

Derrick Newbolt: The 22-year-old man allegedly held up a pharmacy and a smoke shop in Bloomington, Ind., and was caught when police looked up his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and found photos of him holding the same gun described in the robberies.

The teen accused of stabbing three sisters in Pontiac, Mich.: Police say a 17-year-old girl stabbed three people, one of whom was hospitalized, as part of a dispute fueled by Facebook. I don’t know what was said, online or off, but I’ve seen enough idiotic posts on Facebook to know that nothing said there is ever cause for violence.

Brennan Clay: TMZ.com reported this week that the former Dallas Cowboy posted an “inspirational message” on Instagram Jan. 27. That’s not a fail until you consider that Jan. 27 was also the day that Clay was arrested on charges of domestic violence. What did he have to say on social media that fateful day?

“Just remember the second you decide to give up could be the second God is turning your situation around.”

Maybe he should have given up on beating his wife. Just a suggestion.

KIRO-TV: The decision to label something “breaking news” is tricky and, in this world of 24-hour news cycles, always a temptation. But the Seattle-based TV station stretched the definition to the non-breaking point this week when it sent out a “breaking news” item about: tourism in Seattle. If we get to the point where every news item is “breaking,” then nothing really is. Credit Matthew Keys with busting them initially on this bogus breaker.

This week’s social media winner:

The state of Hawaii. The managers of the 50th state’s state parks have tried everything else to keep people away from a dangerous waterfall. Eight people were killed and more than 50 injured at Sacred Falls in a 1999 landslide but that hasn’t kept hikers away. So the state uploaded a video warning people to stay away, and has shared it on Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo. The scenery is beautiful and the warning is stark: Keep out of Sacred Falls park.

It’s not like you’re sending your true confessions to a parish priest or Saul Goodman. The @TweetUrSecrets feed is curated, which means someone somewhere is reading what you type and deciding if it’s scintillating enough to warrant posting to its 15,000-plus followers.

The above post, for instance, hasn’t made the cut as of this writing.

The other caveat is that nothing submitted through a website is truly private. don’t use Tweet Your Secrets to admit to killing someone. The site still collects your data and doesn’t guarantee that it won’t be seen by a third party. And if you’ve confessed to something illegal, your information can still be given to law enforcement.

I say treat this site the way you treat every other social network: If you don’t want the world to know what you have to say, then don’t put it online at all.

Instagram is a great app, but it doesn’t always play well with others. Sure, you can share photos on Facebook easily enough, but that’s hardly a surprise. Facebook owns Instagram. But if you try to post simultaneously to Instagram and, say, Twitter, you just get a link in your tweet. Generally speaking, people don’t click links in Twitter (as Derek Thompson from the Atlantic points out in this must-read essay).

If you want your Twitter followers to see your vintage-filtered square photo of the sun setting on your plate of food, you can do so without (too much) extra effort. Try the following:

Take a photo, add a filter and write a caption for your Instagram post.

Copy the caption of your Instagram photo. You will probably need to tweak it for Twitter and other social platforms, but it’s more efficient to just edit something you’ve already written.

If you post to multiple social media accounts, open the app that lets you do it. I have a Facebook page and several Twitter accounts, so I use Hootsuite and Buffer. You can post to a Facebook page from Instagram, but if you have more than one Facebook account (as I do) it’s a pain to keep switching by logging out of one and logging in to the other.

Create a new tweet, and paste the cutline. Edit as you like. Instagram posts tend to have hashtags loaded at the end, but that’s not as appealing on Twitter.

Tap on the photo you posted in Instagram. At the bottom of your screen in the Twitter app you should see your photo library.

That’s it! Hit the Tweet button and you’re set.

In the Hootsuite and Buffer apps, you’ll have to take the additional step of tapping the camera icon and selecting a photo from your library.

This is more labor intensive than sharing to Facebook, but at lest your Twitter followers won’t be denied your photo talents.

Other peoples’ missteps often serve as lessons to the rest of us. This week’s education, then, includes: Don’t be anti-Semitic on social media, don’t Instagram your inheritance and don’t publish thousands of unredacted emails from your time as governor.

That said, here are five social media fails of the week, followed by one win:

The Rev. Stephen Sizer: The vicar of a church in Surrey, England, was banned from using social media for six months. Sizer posted a link on his Facebook page to an article blaming Israel for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to the BBC. He called the official narrative of the attacks “absurd” and was able to keep his job only by agreeing to keep quiet on social media – and any other kind of media – about Middle East issues.

Robbers who found their victim on Facebook: I consider it bad form to blame victims of crime, whatever the circumstance. But others may not feel so charitable about the Philadelphia man who, in order: a) inherited some expensive jewelry; b) talked about it on Facebook and Instagram; and c) was robbed by three men at gunpoint. The suspects allegedly said they knew to target the victim’s home because they saw his posts on social media. This guy needs either new friends or stronger privacy settings. I’m guessing both.

Twitter: The social media — oh, sure, let’s use the “g” word — giant already was having a bad week, with many high-profile accounts getting hacked. But in its effort to clamp down, Twitter blocked access for many of its users on Tuesday. The problem was fixed a short time later, but not before causing headaches for thousands of people. Good thing there wasn’t a “Walking Dead” episode to live-tweet that night.

Donald Harrison: As I point out in item No. 2 above, it’s never a good idea to brag about your inheritance on social media. The flip side is, it’s not a good idea to post your travel plans and a selfie on social media if you’re trying to flee police. That’s what Harrison allegedly did after police say he attacked a woman in an apartment north of Pittsburgh. Shortly after the assault, Harrison posted on Facebook that he was leaving for South Carolina. He posted a selfie while sitting on a Greyhound bus and police picked him up when the bus stopped in Youngstown, Ohio. The flip side is that criminals who are bad on social media are great for police.

And this week’s social media winner:

Anonymous. The hacktivist group has declared war on ISIS (without need for Congressional action), launching attacks on hundreds of ISIS Twitter accounts and email addresses, according to Dazed Digital. In a statement that included lists of the Twitter accounts it targeted, the collective said:

“ISIS, we will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails and expose you … You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure. We own the internet.”

Say what you will about hackers in general and Anonymous in particular. When they go after groups like ISIS and the Ku Klux Klan, it’s hard to be mad at them.

Who do you think are this week’s social media winners and losers? Discuss in the comments.

I saw this video in my Facebook feed that I found compelling enough to watch (a rarity if it’s not a “Daily Show” clip or puppy video) this morning. In it, a young woman holds up index cards where she’s written her story about sexual abuse, depression and cutting. It’s compelling and popular — the video has been shared tens of millions of times. At the end, she urges other survivors of sexual abuse to reach out to her for support. Frankly, the whole thing is moving enough to make me forgive the woman’s mortal sin of making a vertical video.

Why am I not sharing it? Because flaming twerkers, fake homeless men and other subjects of videos gone viral have taught me that absent any other context, you can’t always believe what you see.

I am not calling this young woman a liar. Like most people, I admire her bravery in telling her story. I checked out her Facebook profile (it’s public), and it appears to be that of a real person. But after searching for news stories with her name and checking the local news website of her purported hometown, I found just one other place where the story was “reported”: The “Doctor Drew On Call” show.

The show, which runs online and on the TV network HLN, ran a segment that could hardly be called journalism. They replayed the six-minute video, then a bunch of talking heads discussed it, without talking to the woman at the center of the story.

You could argue that the virality of her video proves that she doesn’t need the media. She reached 17 million people without the help of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune or even Gawker. A whole cottage industry has grown up around the idea of bypassing the so-called “media filter.” Derek Jeter launched a website so athletes can air their thoughts without reporters parsing their words. Twitter has become the place where celebrities break news, not Page Six.

Fine. But the media still has a role to play in this world where every person has a megaphone. Journalists are still needed to provide context and, yes, skepticism. Craig Silverman, in a new report called “Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content,” argues that the news media aids and abets the spreading of false information on the Internet. It doesn’t have to be that way. The media can help debunk false stories and prevent the spread of bogus, if compelling, content.

That argument assumes the story is false. What if we assume the story is true? The media still has a role to play, providing greater context about the woman’s story and issues of sexual assault, depression and self-mutilation than we could glean from the video alone.

That’s why, absent a media filter, I won’t share this young woman’s video. If a news outlet reports on her and confirms that it’s true, I will update this story here and even share a link so you can watch it yourself.

Doing well on social media is hard to define, and even harder to do. The best most of us can hope to do is an average job that doesn’t inspire outrage or worse, memes. Starting this week, I’ll look at five stories of socially awkward media, and round out the list with one story of someone winning the Internet.

But first, the losers:

Every moronic online commenter who claims vaccines are bad: A new study by Washington State University shows that people may be influenced more by comments than by expert opinion when it comes to deciding whether or not to vaccinate their children. Not only are these people spreading their ignorance, thanks to their stupidity they’re helping to spread dangerous diseases that were once considered all but eradicated.

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa: Public officials embracing social media is a good thing. Public officials like Correa embracing social media to attack those who laugh at them is quite the opposite. The president of Ecuador took to Twitter to counter critics and satirical sites that mock him. Correa, his opponents say, has already targeted his critics by getting their Twitter accounts suspended. He also secured passage of a new media law that lets a government panel decide what constitutes fairness in reporting. The head of a press freedom watchdog group said Correa anointed himself “the owner of humor,” according to the Associated Press.

Jaleel Tariq Abdul-Jabaar: Abdul Jabaar, a Kirkland, Wash., resident, apparently didn’t get the memo that law-enforcement officers take threats on social media seriously. After the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., by a white police officer, Abdul-Jabaar posted on his Facebook page that he was “ready go go and kill some cops.” That was one of the milder threats he made in the wake of the shooting and subsequent grand jury decision.

Benjamin Cole: The former top advisor to a congressman resigned this week after it was discovered he made racist posts on his Facebook page comparing blacks to zoo animals and calling them “hood rats.” Cole’s boss, Aaron Schock, R-Ill., said he was disappointed by his aide’s “inexcusable and offensive” online posts. If there’s any silver lining for the now-unemployed Cole, it’s that he managed to get away with the inexcusable comments (since deleted) for more than a year. Both of the above-reference Facebook posts were from 2013 but only received national attention this week.

This still image taken from a video by jihadists on Jan. 27, 2015, shows Japanese journalist Kenji Goto holding what appears to be a photo of Jordanian pilot 1st Lt. Mu’ath al-Kaseasbeh. (AP Photo)

Enough negativity. Time for the social media winner of the week: the late Kenji Goto. Goto, the Japanese journalist who was beheaded by Isis in late January. By Monday, a four-year-old tweet of his resurfaced and has been retweeted, as of this writing, more than 39,000 times. The message, according to the AP, translates as:

“Closing my eyes and holding still. It’s the end if I get mad or scream. It’s close to a prayer. Hate is not for humans. Judgment lies with God. That’s what I learned from my Arabic brothers and sisters.”

“The internet must be fast, fair and open,” he said. “That is the message I’ve heard from consumers and innovators across this nation. That is the principle that has enabled the internet to become an unprecedented platform for innovation and human expression.”

This is a strong stand by someone whom skeptics (including me) have seen as a former cable-industry man who would bend favorably to the wishes of Comcast, Verizon and other opponents of net neutrality. But after learning about his past career in the early Internet industry in an article on cnet.com, I’d say Wheeler’s proposal is perfectly in line with his beliefs. He also mentions in the Wired.com piece his previous job running a company that competed with another Internet startup, America Online, that benefited from an open Internet environment to become a tech giant.

Now we know where the chairman of the FCC stands. What we don’t know is how the rest of the commission will vote at the end of this month, or whether Congress will successfully pre-empt the FCC’s actions.